RE: techwr-l digest: October 10, 1999

[Kevin McLauchlan <KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com>]

G'day all.

I'm on digest -- of which I seem to get one every few days, 
and the most recent is two days old and contains three messages -- 
so please CC: me directly.

I've been doing software, procedural or other stuff for some 
time and getting back to hardware (at a small, fairly-new 
company) presents a wee problem, as follows.

Is there advice, help, guidance, a school-of-hard-knocks web 
site somewhere that covers agency approvals and the text that 
can-be/should-be included in hardware manuals?

My naive thought was that there would be standard approvals that 
computer-industry manufacturers would seek -- since all their 
stuff kinda has to work together -- and that there would be 
some standard (i.e., boilerplate) text that each agency would 
send with their notices.

"Dear sir:
 We are pleased to inform you that your Thingamajig MK II 
 has passed testing and is certified to meet the requirements 
 for FCC xxx (or UL yyy, or CSA zzz, or Industry Canada bbb, 
 or CE eee, or Deutches Industrie ....).

 As such, your product is entitled to carry the BLOB mark  
 (please see our web site and download the artwork # nnn 
  in your favorite graphic format).

 Furthermore, in accompanying, instructional documentation, you 
 are entitled/required to display the following text, to inform 
 your customers about both your product's compliance and the 
 limits of that compliance when your product is used according 
 to your own instructions.

      Blob of official-looking text, blob of official-looking 
      text, blob of official-looking text...

 Thank you for your business, and please come see us when you 
 modify your product or develop a new model.

 Best standardized regards,

  etc., etc., etc."

Our hardware design group has drawers of files, but they all 
contain nothing but reams of bureaucratic dance cards, 
indicating ongoing relationships, endless side-issues, and 
incremental accretions. Some of 'em even seem to point back 
to a "prime" product that was initially tested before the 
company even existed  (don't go there...  :-).

What I find instead is that every second product manual I 
pick up has not only a different collection of statements 
(sometimes they even overlap...) but different wording for 
those statements.  I've seen, for example, FCC B compliance 
statements that took about three paragraphs and FCC B 
statements that took well over a page.

I've poked around the UL, FCC, CSA, Industry Canada and 
other web sites and generally found enormous quantities of 
auto-back-patting, helpful hints about unrelated stuff, 
newsletters, incremental updates to standards, discussions, 
service offerings, etc. 

But never does a keyword search seem to yield up a flat 
statement that "If you (or your product) pass this battery 
of tests, you can display THIS EXACT TEXT, HERE...."

I'm reduced to cadging from manuals for other people's 
products and systems that we have lying around -- computers 
that we develop/test in, peripherals that we use in the 
office, test equipment, cell phone user guides, the manual 
for the photocopier across the hall -- 'tain't right, somehow.

What do y'all do?  Where's the secret stash?  :-)

Thanks for listening, and for any help,


Kevin McLauchlan
kmclauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com